“It is that as I was cruelly bored, as you say, and as I had the seventy-five pistoles in my pocket which you had distributed to me, in order to amuse myself I invited a gentleman who was traveling this way to walk up, and proposed a cast of dice. He accepted my challenge, and, my faith, my seventy-five pistoles passed from my pocket to his, without reckoning my horse, which he won into the bargain. But you, my dear d’Artagnan?”

“What can you expect, my dear Porthos; a man is not privileged in all ways,” said d’Artagnan. “You know the proverb ‘Unlucky at play, lucky in love.’ You are too fortunate in your love for play not to take its revenge. What consequence can the reverses of fortune be to you? Have you not, happy rogue that you are⁠—have you not your duchess, who cannot fail to come to your aid?”

“Well, you see, my dear d’Artagnan, with what ill luck I play,” replied Porthos, with the most careless air in the world. “I wrote to her to send me fifty louis or so, of which I stood absolutely in need on account of my accident.”

“Well?”